Deeper into the Processing {FloraBella Colorplay set}

These past few weeks I have been taking you thorough my processes using the FloraBella Colorplay action set & showing you what a few of the actions run alone does to my images. In those posts I have stopped short of taking my images to where I really wanted them to be in an effort to show you just what the action does. This time I wanted to show you not only what one does- but what layering actions will do & then the final little touches you can do to perk up your images just a little more.

This week I am working on an image from the set I posted back on 9/30 from my mini-session with Mr. Man. I had processed those with FloraBella’s Classic Color set so I was pushing myself to then process this one for this post using the Colorplay set instead & be just as happy with it.

Since I have shown you my process for getting to the clean edit a few times I figured I would just start there this week.

I ran the Clean Base action & the image on the left shows what it looks like before I started adjusting the layers. It’s clean & bright & brings out the highlights in his hair. The image on the right shows what I ended with after adjusting the layers to my liking (basically reducing nearly all of them) I left the black & white layer off at this point.

For the purposes of this post I turned on the black & white layer so you can see what that will do after I adjusted the other layers. I didn’t want to go the black & white route this time so I then turned it off & merged my layers. I then ran the Ocean Air action & reduced all the layers considerably to get to this image on the right. Nice, fresh- but it wasn’t popping for me yet.

I then merged those layers & then ran the Summer Peach action – again reducing all the layers to my liking. Still not quite popping for me.

So I ran the Color Depth action & reduced the layers slightly. Now we are getting somewhere.

(Keep in mind that there are many different ways I could have gone about getting to this point. The whole purpose of this was to play with this action set & see what I could do with it & most importantly- get familiar enough with it that I know what each one does & the result I will get from it.)

So since I was in a playing mood I decided to add a sun flare layer on soft light to see what that would do. Brought out the highlights in his hair a bit more- good. Then I was itching to play with the awesome textures that Kristy from Life n’ Reflection sent me from the driftwood collection – so I added a touch of that.

Sharpened & called it a day. You can see the difference between the clean edit & the final here.

Here it is- the final edit alone. I love his sweet nature. Always willing to give a hand- no matter what it is.